What a Mess

My conspicuous 2 day absence from this blog, in clear violation of the rules, has an explanation (if not an excuse). Tuesday night was a major debacle in my dating history. The night started relatively well---a little shakey, but nothing that wasn't easily overcome; I met a girl I'd emailed a few times over Match.com at Bukowski's, a great hole in the wall beer oasis in downtown Boston (named after the "poet" who, if my date's info. is good, was basically a second-rate Nabokov who actually stuck his dirty old penis in all of the young girls he seduced ... so that he could dump them, go on a whiskey bender, and put the stories in ink for posterity. Only in America).

Any way, long-short: Sappers (as I'll call her) was VERY intelligent. This quality alone made me swoon a little, despite her size (very curvy) which generally isn't for me. To top it off, she had a gorgeous smile and delicate laugh. Despite her drinking me under the table (by my count, at night's end, she'd had 6 beers ... at least 3 of which were 22 oz.), we managed to carry on an interesting enough conversation to bring us to a second bar, The Pour House.

This is when the date began to self-destruct.

Sappers is a teacher. To be precise, she's a behavior modification specialist. These may not have been the exact words she used to describe her work, but to the best of my recollection, she did say:

"I read Brave New World for class a second time, and I realized I admired the way that society was organized." and "Basically, I manipulate people for a living."

Now, before you say, "Captain, perhaps you should have realized at the outset that Sappers was ... how shall I put this ... CRAZY! and you should have cut your losses with a long shit in the W.C., which you could have subsequently described to her in great detail." Well, perhaps. But differences of opinion are what make living worthwhile, and she defended her point of view admirably, so I gave it a go.

Unfortunately, differences of opinion sank this date. Toward the end (when the six beers she'd pounded started to catch up with her?), I innocently informed her that I plan on homeschooling my kids. My justification is less important than her reaction (I'm trying to keep politics off of this blog, since it's my hobby-horse). Needless-to-say, her head nearly starting spinning and vomiting in every direction. I calmly tried to bring her around to my P.O.V., but it was too late. She'd decided that I was a future "child abuser", and we parted.

Lesson learned: if you're going to date school teachers, don't quote Paul Simon, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein or any other luminary who says something to the effect of "I never let schooling interfere with my education."